Peyton Manning, trying with all his might to live up to the Tim Tebow comparisons.

Yahoo Sports found an ingenious, if accidental, way to bring home how flubby and unpredictable the first week of the NFL season was on Monday morning. Fantasy owners awoke to find most—not all, but most—of their fantasy players’ touchdowns missing, leaving just interceptions, fumbles lost, and yardage totals that suddenly looked paltry in the extreme. Yahoo is working on it, and it will be fixed soon. But something about the omission seemed oddly right. After a Week One in which nearly all of the NFL’s elite (and non-elite) made plenty of mistakes, it made a certain sense to see all those flubs recorded for the record, while the positives vanished.

It would have made more sense, though, if Peyton Manning and Robert Griffin III—the NFL’s two most hotly anticipated quarterback debuts of the season—had remained untouched. On a Sunday when Drew Brees, Aaron Rodgers and Michael Vick all appeared overmatched at times, and the NFL’s replacement refs looked even more so, Manning and RGIII delivered the goods. The Redskins rookie took apart the New Orleans Saints in an upset, while the returning vet making his Denver debut looked uncannily like Peyton Manning in leading the Broncos past the Steelers in Sunday’s nightcap.

That’s a nice way of saying that Peyton Manning didn’t necessarily do anything awe-ing in leading the Broncos over, around and through a strong Steelers defense. The remarkable thing, in retrospect, is that Manning didn’t do anything wrong in the process, delivering a vintage Peyton Manning performance after spending a year sidelined by a neck injury. No brilliant quarterbacking effort has been so understated since, well, the last time Peyton Manning delivered one.

For Griffin, the Heisman Trophy winner for whom the Redskins swapped three first-round picks, the most impressive play of his stellar debut may not have been a rush or a pass, although he was electrifying at both, finishing with 42 yards on the ground and 320 through the air. But an open-field block on Saints defensive back Roman Harper—a brawny, old-fashioned cut block courtesy of the franchise player—may stand as Griffin’s play of the day. “On the day RG3 announced himself to the NFL as the lead candidate for Best Young Quarterback in the Game, he made a football block in a football contest in front of football players,” Yahoo’s Les Carpenter writes. “It’s the kind of thing teammates don’t forget.”

It may just be that these two had a good day, just as a bad day would’ve been just that. But Broncos and Redskins fans can be forgiven for thinking big after Sunday. “RG3 had infused a floundering franchise with the magic ingredient that every player, coach and executive seeks from the team’s most important player,” Yahoo’s Michael Silver writes. “Hint: It shares a name with the Arkansas town where a certain former president was born, and it’s the precise quality that the Broncos—whose Tebowmania-tinged drive to the playoffs last season evoked all sorts of faith-based proclamations—are brimming with after Sunday night. This is not to say that Manning’s 19-of-26, 253-yard, two-touchdown, no-interception performance stands as conclusive proof that he’ll enjoy another MVP-caliber season, any more than RG3′s first game means he’ll avoid the choppiness and adversity that for so long have been endemic to rookie quarterbacks.”

Of course not. But hope, being hope, should be stubborn enough to survive whatever bumps lay ahead. Whatever else needs to be done to make the Broncos and Redskins into contenders, they at least stood out on Sunday as teams that seem to have the quarterbacks they need.

Jets fans, being Jets fans, are not so inclined toward the optimistic, and certainly are not expecting epic, franchise-changing quarterback play from the mercurial Mark Sanchez. And yet, on Sunday, even Jets fans got a dose of hope from their quarterback, who quieted the long, loud sort-of-conversation about whether backup Tim Tebow deserved the Jets job by playing one of his best, steadiest and most confident games as a pro in a lopsided Jets win over the Bills. “He was threading needles on out patterns and hitting guys in stride deep,” New York’s Will Leitch writes. “He didn’t seem the least bit distracted when he would occasionally run off the field for a series of ‘Wildcat’ plays with Tim Tebow that provided diminishing returns. He looked like the franchise quarterback the Jets have been desperately waiting for him to become.”

* * *

It’s true, even if it severely undersells the excitement of watching it happen: Serena Williams was expected to win the U.S. Open, and did so in grand style on Sunday. But while her three-set tangle with Victoria Azarenka in Sunday’s final was undoubtedly the most closely contested and exciting element of Serena’s six-round romp, it was also very much in keeping with the brilliance and focus Williams displayed throughout.

“When Roger Federer was winning multiple majors each year as a matter of ritual, the matches were seldom close, but we were awestruck at his brilliance, his ability to maneuver the ball like no other player,” Sports Illustrated’s Jon Wertheim writes. “Serena doesn’t possess Federer’s naturally beautiful game. But her gifts can be just as striking and conspicuous and singular. Apart from her unrivaled power, he has rations of mental strength that are unmatched in tennis—and, I would contend, in all of sports.”

But as great a champion as Serena inarguably is, she is also a high-wattage star seemingly custom built for the U.S. Open. Her signature brashness, cockiness and occasional imperiousness ensure that Williams is not for everyone, and really not for some people. But what good rock star isn’t at least a little divisive? “Rock stars do what they want,” the Journal’s Jason Gay explains. “Rock stars aren’t beholden to images and tradition, to schedules and public opinion. Rock stars can go off track. They can make their fans a little crazy and nervous. But true rock stars are also survivors. And when they perform at their highest level, they’re irresistible.”

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Comments (4 of 4)

@ Matt - What Saints team are you talking about? They were very popular on defense. They had the same swag as Pitt and Bmore. Are you kiddin me?

3:16 pm September 10, 2012

Matt wrote:

It's too soon to call RG3 amazing. He had an amazing debut, but the NO Saints aren't known for their defense, and there is no pro game tape on RG3. I do wish him luck, though.

12:39 pm September 10, 2012

Mad Cannuck wrote:

RGIII, acts and talks like a guy I could certainly root for. If he keeps playing AND developing like he did yesterday, the painfull last 10+ years the Skin's have experienced will be forgotten rather quickly. Too good to be true, maybe.
I like what I saw on the field and afterward, he seems very well grounded, where in the NFL, that's not always a given....................Go Skin's!

11:51 am September 10, 2012

Hey Hey wrote:

Well, now I know who'll be kicking the Cowboys tails in our division the next ten years. Last ten years it was generally Philadelphia. Jerry Jones is such a egotistical knucklehead.

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